Some good information here guys, I appreciate it! I'm going to look into a Jib crane pricing today, possibly an overhead gantry if we can't fit a jib that works

Those of you guys such as myself who deal with bigger fixtures/parts to cut, (Mine are anywhere from 2-600 pound fixtures.) How do you guys move them on/off your machine? Currently we place our Fixtures upon the table with a Forklift, then we use an overhead gantry crane to lift/roll it around the table into position. Our new machine is proving to be a bit more complicated as it's much lower and is enclosed, so moving a forklift into it is not really an option and I'm looking at what we'll do to get our tools in/out and moved about on the machine itself.

I had no idea my TCP was doing this. Learn something new every day. TCP Is a pretty fascinatingly cool function

I almost always use Carbide

We use Fusion ERP right now, it's not too bad and is able to handle our 100 person team, but We're looking to switch soon to something a bit easier to work with. No input on those, but I can tell you to stay away from Fusion!

That doesn't look like a 5 axis cut though. Why not use a 3 axis toolpath to give you the control you need.

Call me a fanboy, but even for Gaming I prefer the Nvidias. Same with Intel, I prefer intel over AMD and Nvidia over ATI. Just had better experiences with them

I'm not sure the architecture on the ATI cards are all that optimized for the MC crunching

Now imagine that my 15'Y, 10'X, 6'Z, holds a 6' Z column, a large enough spindle to run 25k RPMs, and still only sits on 2 trails, 4 trucks total with 4 bolts each, so 16 bolts holding that entire thing together =P I feel your pain!

Oh no worries. My new home Computer is a beast! Been slowly buying parts for about 5 months now, just the CPU cooler and Power supply left to go, got my GTX980 card sitting here, my i7-4790k, 16Gb Ram, 250GB SSD, 2TB HD. Just waiting................ But it's for gaming, not for work I might use it to program here and then if I get a huge project at work that I gotta run a little overtime on but we'll see

Hmm this thread is making me feel better. Literally just recieved the GTX 980 I ordered for my new Gaming Rig, nice to know it'll work well for some programming if I ever need to do it.

So after some research into what we already have installed and what we need. Our main compressor has a dryer attached to it, so the air quality we recieve at the line that will go into the router is somewhat decent (dew point of about -15F according to the meter I used yesterday.) And our machine tool itself has 3 filters, and a dryer attached to the machine itself. What they need me to supply is a "pre-filter" to filter out anything the compressed air may pick up during it's travel from the dried compressor air, through the hoses to the machine. filter before it hits the machine's pre-installed filter/dryers. So a bit less critical than I was imagining it would be. I spoke with the installation tech about his needs and it seems airflow is going to be the most critical part, and ensuring it gets rid of everything down to 40 microns of particles. The dryer/filters on the machine itself will take the air down to -70F Dew point and 5 micron filters.

Yeah after reading a bunch of articles on dew point measurements, CFM flow, micron size of allowed particles. I've realized I need the specs of my machine to do anything, and those are down at the new building, going to head down tomorrow and get the specs then go searching. Anyone have brand reccomendations though so I can make sure i'm not buying some harbor freight junk?

Ah, thanks for the correction. It's a water trap I'm looking for then.

So I'm looking into an In-Line air dryer for our compressed air to our new machine. What brands/types have you guys had success with? I was looking at something like this, but unsure about what is more common with the medium/large size routers. http://www.eastwood.com/two-stage-desiccant-dryer-system.html

That's what we're here for! Glad we got you helped out

No problem! You'll also find that symbol at the bottom of a lot of word processors in the same spot. Excel, Word, and Other MS products definitely show it!

Gets me about once a year before I remember there's an insert key on my keyboard. Look at the bottom right of the editor and there should be something that says "OVR" If you're in over-write mode, which is what you are describing. Hitting the insert key on your keyboard should change it over to INS for insert mode which is what you want. Here's where it is.

Thanks! Just got it installed/ran and it's working perfect.

Is the download on the first page of this thread the most recent version of the Verisurf tools for MCX-8?

Took me about 5 months of watching someone program and asking questions about it, to start writing 3+2 axis programs. That was 2 years ago, I still have quite a bit to learn mainly on the gcode/post-processor side (luckily our machine has a rock solid post-processor that I don't have to mess with.) So about 6 months from absolutely 0 knowledge of what a CNC machine even was to programming/running our 5 axis gantry router on 3+2 programs. 6 months of doing that later, I got a job with a full 5 Axis Machine and I've been doing that for exactly 1 year this month with little-to-no problems running aerospace parts with +/-.005" tolerances. Don't get me wrong, I've got a LOT to learn, and I only use a pretty niche set of toolpaths for my work, however I've got a good grasp on what toolpaths others would use, and the basic idea of how they work. (80% of my work is done in 5 axis curve or swarf.) Varys from person to person, but as far as taking the simple stuff off of your load, should be able to train a guy fairly quickly if they're quick learners.

I'll send you a message with our inspection guy's e-mail. He was the one who wanted to know =] I just use the tools version you have here, he uses full-blown verisurf. I'll walk over and ask him if he'd like to test it out.

Is there any date on when the full Verisurf X8 Package will be out? With inspection tools etc for laser/probe devices?

Is there a radius on the tool you're using to cut that doesn't fit/match with any radiuses on the bottom of your surfaces? I've seen this happen where, when the tool can't fit in the radius, it ignores that lower level altogether.

Yeah I tried it too and it worked for me as well! Looks like I was doing it wrong!